The smart home is constantly evolving, with a seemingly never ending wave of communication technologies popping up, promising to better connect our devices and automate our lives.
The likes of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are obviously the most well known and are, no doubt, packed into a bunch of tech already in your house; and then there’s the smart home specialist protocols such as Zigbee or Z-Wave, or even Matter-enabled devices through Thread.
One technology you might not have heard of, yet, is LoRa (taken from ‘Long Range’), which is a physical proprietary radio communication technique.
LoRa is a pretty major player in the commercial IoT space, where it is widely used across a variety of applications and devices such as smart meters, asset tracking, energy monitoring, smart city planning and a whole lot more.
But we are seeing more consumer facing LoRa devices popping up – i.e. smart home devices that regular folk can buy and use in their own homes.
How does LoRa work?
The clue is in the name. LoRa’s long range magic lies in its unique spread spectrum modulation technique, which is said to have a range of 100x compared to Bluetooth.
This technology allows signals to travel vast distances, even through walls and other obstacles that would typically hinder wireless communication.
Imagine connecting devices throughout your entire property, from the basement to the attic, and even out into the yard, all without worrying about signal strength.
This extended range is a key advantage over other smart home technologies like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, which often struggle to reach devices located far from a central hub.
But LoRa’s long reach isn’t its only superpower. It’s also incredibly power-efficient.
Devices powered by LoRa can often run on batteries for years, significantly reducing the hassle of frequent replacements. This low-power consumption is crucial for devices like sensors, which are often deployed in hard-to-reach locations where changing batteries can be a pain in the butt.
What is LoRaWAN?
LoRa is the underlying radio frequency technology that enables long-range, low-power communication. It’s the foundation upon which a network is built.
The proprietary physical layer technology is owned by Camarillo-based Semtech, who acquired it from its inventors, the French company Cycleo, back in 2013.
The LoRa Alliance, on the other hand, is a not-for-profit organization that oversees LoRaWAN; the communication protocol that defines how devices use LoRa radio to communicate.
LoRaWAN sets the rules for how devices connect to the network, how data is formatted and transmitted, while at the same time keeping things secure.
So LoRa provides the long-range communication capability, and LoRaWAN adds the necessary structure and organization to create a functional network.
The LoRa Alliance includes some pretty big names such as Amazon, Cisco, Comcast, Microsoft, Semtech, STMicroelectronics and The Things Industries.
Why does this all matter for the smart home?
The implications for the smart home are pretty obvious. We all want devices that communicate better, over larger areas, without the need for hubs and repeaters everywhere, right?
The likes of YoSmart, Shelly and Eddy have a bunch of products already on sale – think leak detectors, smart water valves, garage door openers, light switches and more – all packing LoRa tech; and the Connected Things Store has a bunch of LoRa gateways and devices for you to try out.
Yes, you will need another hub / gateway to use these but it’s likely brands could add LoRa radios to multi-skilled smart home hubs in the same way the likes of Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, Wi-Fi and more all live together inside one box.
One such brand, TrackNet, actually showed off such a box, way back at CES 2018.
Its smart home monitoring platform, Tabs, never took off but the gateway – which also doubled up as a functional dual-band 801.11ac Wi-Fi router – showed what was possible.
How LoRa could be used in the smart home
LoRa isn’t a magic bullet though and its use cases will be pretty niche… hence why it’s carving out a market in the commercial IoT space rather than the consumer smart home one, at the moment.
LoRa has a data rate is relatively low, making it unsuitable for applications that require transmitting large amounts of data, such as video streaming, music casting and the like.
But its long range, low power consumption, and cost-effectiveness make it an attractive option for connecting a wide array of devices – especially on the safety / security monitoring side.
The likes of Zigbee and Z-Wave have dominated this space for decades – and even more so given the latter’s recent roll-out of Z-Wave Long Range – but it’s likely that LoRa could still carve out a share of the market too, should Alliance members attempt to free it from the shackles of its business-focused positioning.
One area where LoRa seems to be gaining some ground is the robot lawnmower market. The excellent Mammotion Luba 2 AWD uses LoRa to keep the robot and the base station paired up in large gardens, and CES 2025 was awash with brands introducing machines with a similar setup.
LoRa FAQs
Yes, currently most LoRa devices require a LoRaWAN gateway to connect to your home network and the internet. Think of it as a bridge between your LoRa devices and your existing Wi-Fi or Ethernet network. While integrated hubs with LoRa capability are possible and have been demonstrated, they are not yet widely available in the consumer market.
No, LoRa is not intended to replace Wi-Fi. They serve different purposes. Wi-Fi is ideal for high-bandwidth applications like streaming video, while LoRa excels at long-range, low-power communication for devices that transmit small amounts of data, like sensors.
Yes, LoRaWAN includes built-in security features, including end-to-end encryption, to protect your data. The LoRa Alliance continuously works to enhance the security of the LoRaWAN protocol.
